Active Member

hey fellas
im looking to upgrade my sony 905 to something that is good at both ie; dvd+cd.I was looking at maybe a pioneer 717???
the question is, is it worth it? is there such a thing as a good player for both? the reason i ask is i dont have room for 2 units.

Active Member

cheers Brian
thats just what i was worried about, i cant really afford something like that...
so is it better to buy a dedicated cd player and keep the sony for dvd's and try and find room for it?
will i actually notice much difference with a cd player rather than playing them through the sony?

Moderator

I previously owned a Toshiba SD900e DVD player that was said to be very good with CD replay, but to me it was not good enough so I bought an Arcam CD73 CD player that was IMO excellent. For many people though I think the SD900e would have been plenty good enough for CD. They can now be bought for around £300 second hand and are also excellent DVD players.
I demod several DVD players before upgrading to an Arcam DV27 and that was even better at CD playing than my CD73, so I sold the CD73. I then upgraded to a DV29 and that is yet another step up with CD replay. IMHO and many others on the forum Arcam are about the only DVD players to do CD replay any justice (without spending really silly amounts of money) and a good s/h one or even a discontinued Arcam player can be had for a good price and they have the bonus of outstandinf PQ on DVD play.

Active Member

cheers Mark
i think i'll try and make some room for a cd player then,,
i was looking at Marantz 6000ose ki's and arcam 7's? (something oldish but good qual)rather than new cheap crap.
any ratings on these

Active Member

Something else worth investigating that was suggested to me recently is adding a dedicated stereo dac and using your DVD player as the transport. It makes sense that £400 worth of DAC plus your existing DVD player will usually be better than £400 worth of CD player.

Its also worth noting that even a mid range AV amp (up to a grand) is more than likely compromising your CD playback. If you have a multi channel input for your amp and you do get a dedicated DAC or CD player make sure its hooked up via the multi channel. This can bybass a lot of the reprocessing that most AV amps do.

Active Member

thanks Brian
thats a good idea, not sure how to use a dac though? does it go in between the sony and denon amp or do they have amps built in?
think this thread has got side lined into cd instead of dvd "oops"
when you say multi channel is that the inputs via the phono's ie; for sacd using interconnects?
i appreciate your help here guy's i'm a bit lost with all this stuff, give me a pc or network and i'll pretty much sort anything out but as for amps dacs and transports ?????????
can you recommend a half decent DAC not too expensive.

Moderator

A DAC would sit between your DVD player and AV receiver. You connect the DVD to DAC via a digital coax or optical lead and the DAC to AV via analogue phono cable.
The DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) does as the name suggests and converts the digital signal that is output from the disk transport and converts it to an analogue signal that you amps in the AV receiver can then work on and send to the speakers.

Yes the multichannel inputs are those use to connect a DVD-A/SACD player. These are generally not affected by digital processing in the receiver and therefore give a purer sound. Many receivers will have a pure analogue input option for a stero source. The down side to this route though is that with no digital processing you will loose the signal being sent to the subwoofer so the L&R speakers have to do all the work.

Active Member

I was in the same boat looking for a player, which was also good with cd replay.
After various demos went for the arcam dv 89, a £1300 player which is now half price and have been very pleased with sound and pic quality.